Wherein I blather on RPG design, play, and stuff I design, as well as rules-lite games and classic D&D and Traveller (and others), proving that while I don't have a life, I do have a keyboard.

Saturday, November 9, 2013

This Stuff is GREAT !

Other than keyboards and bathrobes (tm) my most popular posts seem to be reviews. So, here is another one some more.

So,
there's this guy (I guess) who goes by"Lars Dangly" over on one of the
big RPG forums. So what? So he is kind of a random RPG encounter - out
of the blue he has posted two free excellent RPGs.

One of them is "Balrogs and Bagginses"
a set of original (and early) edition rules for playing in middle earth
-and clearly channeling the adventure ethos of "The Hobbit ".

It is really really good, and this is coming from a massive JRRT geek. The rules are concise, freestanding (mostly spells are still a bit beta) and very nicely developed from bog standard OD&D.

So, it scores two hits in
1. Successfully pulling off a Middle earth RPG without being wildly concerned with microdetails, and

2. is another excellent example of what I think the OSR is doing (or should do) starting with the very basics of D&D and evolving it in a different direction.

Plus, the cover uses one of the best "adventure and get treasure" pix, evar.

Seriously, I love me some MERP, and tolerated me some whatever the second one was, and pretty much poked at the new middle earth RPGwith a stick, - but, this is at least as good as MERP for feel, and given that MERP was tied to the mondotablequest engine has a much more elegant system.

No kidding: it's a take on old style D&D that gets around the three class model very elegantly and avoids race as class (which I despise, thank you very much) . Very elegantly. Seriously, check it out -I'd go into it in detail, but as it is free, you can download it and decide for yourself. Plus, my beer is getting cold.

4 comments:

Thanks for the pointer. Was fun reading B&B last night. We should give it a whirl.

Also take a look at the Camp Table skirmish rules I posted at Ruminations. I'm going to start playtesting today to see if A) I got close to the original feel in this resurrection attempt and B) whether it sucks. Would love to bash out a quick game or two with you and roll the results back in.

Hellholes and Dead Ends of the Traveller Universe : Examples of why bizarre random world generation is Fun and Interesting and not just an abomination in the eyes of planetary science.... (Link to first one here on blog)